Friday, February 25, 2011

One of the things that brands are encouraged to do these days is to build useful tools - brand utility and that sort of thing. Don't just send messages to people, give them something that they can use to make their lives easier or more interesting. Nike Plus, Nike's collaboration with Apple is always held up ad a great example.

A perfect non-brand example is Churnalism.com. Churnalism.com is a site that lets you input the text of a press release, and it then finds where this has appeared in the British press (& BBC websites), and the extent to which the journalist just cut and paste from the press release.

(The phrase churnalism was coined by Nick Davies in his book Flat Earth News, to describe things that appeared in newspapers but were just regurgitated press releases)

Thursday, February 24, 2011

I like this plan to finance the purchase of a new ship for Greenpeace.

Pick an item, and buy it for them, rather than just selecting the random donation level that most charities ask for. Once an item is bought, it appears in the catalogue as Sold Out. It's a bit like a wedding list in that there are lots of small pieces (cutlery, pens), and also some bigger pieces. So far most of the small pieces have gone, but very few of the big pieces, which might be a problem with this approach.

In a similar vein, The Girl Store for The Mahindra Foundation asks you to fund schooling for girls in Africa, with pictures of the children who are being funded, and the items they need. Once the money has been raised the girl is labelled 'Off To School'

Both of these approaches show that it's often more of an incentive to give if you can see the change you create in a practical way.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Uniqlooks is a new site from Uniqlo, where users upload pictures of their look, taken in a very simple Sartorialist style (who in turn probably got it from ID), for others to like, and share. Each week the site will award a look of the week, as voted for by users. (Sartorialist pics are often among the most shared online, as measured by their appearance in Bitlynews)

It doesn't need to be all Uniqlo; just one bit and you qualify.

(As for me, today I'm wearing a mix of Sunspel and Diesel, with a coat from Joseph)

We haven't seen all that many apps like this. A few years ago I read about Otetsudai Networks, a real time temp agency in Japan that found people for casual jobs, based on their current location, but not that much since. Let's hope that this imaginative idea is the start of a flood of them.

An interactive bus stop with a 72-inch touch screen was put in each of 20 San Francisco neighbourhoods. People would play as they waited for their bus; the neighbourhood with the highest score at the end of the campaign won a concert to OK Go in their neighbourhood.

(North Beach won, then Tenderloin, then Mission)

Full info here. Very smart stuff! It's not gaming for it's own sake, it's providing a genuine benefit to commuters in terms of enjoyment and entertainment. I'd love to hear from anyone who played; do you miss it?

Today Radiohead announced their new album, with a very minimalist post on their official site: "Thank You For Waiting"

The post clicks through to the dedicated The King of Limbs site (a bit like Drake did last year), where, once you've selected your location, you can pre-order it for download on Saturday.

The options are pretty sparse - digital only at £6 or £9, depending on file size, and also as "the world's first* Newspaper Album" (*probably - I love the 'probably'), which is a physical package and will be delivered in May. 'Physical' buyers get the digital version to be going on with.

I love the speed of this - I love how they've effectively said 'We're ready - here you are'. I'm sure this will happen far more; it's a good way to counter leaks and piracy too.

I wish they could have done like Lady Gaga did on Friday when she said 'Here's my new single - listen here, and download here', but I guess that there are more logistical problems with larger downloads, and they're selling it directly rather than through iTunes. Presumably once they have the list of buyers they can stagger the emails for the download code so as to not overwhelm their servers. & since they're selling it directly they get a larger share of the revenues.

I've had a play with the site, installed the Chrome bookmarklet, and it seems good. These are my quotes, from my initial playing around. It'll be interesting to see what sort of quotes people save; Pinterest has a very girly focus so far.

The site uses data from Foursquare to see when people tend to visit attractions in London, presents it as a chart, and then allows you to see when it's likely to be less busy. If you want to visit Tate Modern when it's not busy, go on Wednesday.

I think we need a lot more of this sort of thing. One of the things I find frustrating about Foursquare is the lack of imaginative use of the data.

For example I'd love to see the top places in London by postcode (or more to the point, places where I'm going on holiday). & I'd love to get recommendations for other places to go (also even better if abroad) from the places I've been to already.